The Urgency of a Renewed Progressive People Centered Pan Africanism

In these trying times for Pan Africanism one occassionally reverts back to its intellectual origins. 

Or at least how one encountered it. 

From the intellectual writings and organic activism of the African Americans such as W.E. du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X. 

Or the amazing writings and again actions of for example the African Carribeans George Padmore and Walter Rodney. 

We can also historically crossover to the minutes of the  Pan Africanist Congresses that occurred in London and Paris in years 1900, 1919, 1921, 1923 and 1945. 

I may have missed some but the last one of that period in 1945 gave us on the African continent the likes of Nkrumah (Ghana) , Cabral (Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde), Kenyatta (Kenya), Neto (Angola) and Nyerere (Tanzania). 

But even before the political struggles there were the cultural ones. 

We had our critical anti-colonial authors, musicians and religious leaders. 

These included those that were griots or spirit mediums during our initial anti-colonial struggles such as those that shaped for example the Maji Maji rebellions in Tanzania. 

The first Chimurenga in Zimbabwe. 

The Mau Mau rebellion as led by Dedan Kimathi and others in Kenya. 

And in the post second world war era those that shaped Pan African liberatory and literary discourse like Amos Tutuola, Chinua Achebe and later on the likes of Ngugi wa Thiongo, Peter Abrahams, Bessie Head and many youthful others like Dambudzo Marechera. 

But the point of this article is not the historicity of Pan Africanism

It is more about its future. 

One that however must be grounded in the same said history of progressive struggles against the repression of racism, colonialism and a renewed neo-colonialism.

But more significantly review the contemporary versions and understandings of what it Pan Africanism now means. 

I am sure I have written about Pan Africansim before. And perhaps in a very Fanonian and Nyerereist sense. 

But its most dominant version, which I disagree with is its African Rennaisance 'Mbekite' (Thabo Mbeki, former South African president) version. 

Mainly because of its comparatively easy desire to integrate Africa into a 'third way' global neoliberalism. 

Even if it sometimes had moments of brilliance such as having prevented an invasion of Zimbabwe in 2008 by Tony Blair (UK) and George Bush (USA) based on their doctrine of 'liberal interventionism'. As they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

What is however now obtaining is a convoluted assumption of Pan Africanism being about 'capitalism' and in my own country Zimbabwe's case 'the ease of doing business'. 

Or generally, an abstract, distant seat at the table for geographically 'African' businesses/even oligarchs at the seat of global (western) capitalist tables. Inclusive of hobnobing with techno-feudalists such as Musk for a dollar out of the African peoples 15 cents! 

All without an organic understanding of why Pan Africanism was an urgent ideologically lived struggle for the continent beyond geographical placement. 

So we need a renewed, revived and organic Pan Africanism. 

One grounded in our own historical realities but primed to meet the past with the present and the future. 

One that understands that technologies such as artifical intelligence (AI) are both the equivalent of a Maxim gun but also an enabler of better human development like a solar energy panel. 

We need a Pan Africanism that responds more to global realties with a people-centered lense. 

And pro-actively prevents proxy wars for rare-earth minerals and talks back to the global north's still imperialistic and racist foreign policies. 

Even where we argue for Pan African self-reliance we would do well to remember the resolution of the United Nations General Assembly (sponsored by Ghana) (Resolution 217A III) on reparations for slavery.

We are, as Africans, owed these reparations not only for slavery/the slave trade but also for colonialism and its devastating afyer effects via our loss of agency.

So we cannot argue simplistically about 'self-reliance' when we do not analyse why we are where we are in the first place. 

Ask any African crossing the Sahel why they are going to Europe and most times they will give an explanation of having been told that thats where life is better. Even as  the mineral wealth of where they are going comes from their own countries of origin.

We therefore have to re-confront a racist global imperialistic infrastructure for what it exactly is via a revived Pan Africanism.

Moreso in an age of AI and clear oligarchal techno-feudalism.

And above all, we must remain optimistic. We shall overcome. 

Only if we retain our own Pan Africanist consciousness.

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity